Verifying Your Carrier Invoice Should Be Easier Than a Root Canal

Root canal? Check. Clean the cat box? Check. Verify the shipping invoice(s) from your carrier(s)? Check. Now THAT’S a day to look forward to, right? OK, maybe looking at your carrier bill isn’t quite like a root canal or dealing with the cat, but who actually looks forward to carefully verifying their shipping bill? There can be hundreds or thousands of individual package shipments to check. That’s a big job. Let’s look at making this an easier process.

The right shipping system can really help here. We often hear “I’m looking at my invoice and it looks too high.” The unasked question seems to be “Where are those great rates that were negotiated?” So how to go about checking the bills? If your shipping system's daily shipping reports show the carrier's published rates, you might try applying your carrier contract’s discounts to the published rates on your shipping reports. Since the discount percentage varies according to the service you use and the weight of each box, this is not really straightforward. But if your shipping system shows your company's specific rates, one immediate benefit is accurate cost reporting. So how do you get your company’s specific rates into your multiple carrier shipping system?

First, ask your shipping system provider to help you get your company's contracted rates with the carriers into your shipping system. This is a key step in making this an easier process and is a common request for shippers using our CPS shipping software. We help our users with this all the time. Next, be sure that your shipping system accounts for the fuel surcharges that are prevalent with some carriers. When your shipping system reports reflect accurate shipping costs, you can create a better, faster, much more accurate invoice checking process that works for your company.

There is a lot of power in a multiple carrier shipping system that uses your company's rates. And we’ll talk about another key benefit to this next time. Until then, visit www.HarveySoft.com if you would like to know more about CPS.